It is right and proper to take the side of Anwar Ibrahim, former Malaysian deputy prime minister, in his (so far) unequal struggle with his former mentor, prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. As Mahathir prepares to strengthen his grip on power through an election likely to be held in August, Anwar is facing another set of politically motivated criminal accusations-this time, for sodomy.
The ruling coalition headed by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is certain to remain in power. A poor result for UMNO would undermine Mahathir's position, but is unlikely to topple the man who has moulded Malaysia's race-based democracy into a unique blend of populist authoritarianism.
A martyr's crown seems to sit as easily on Anwar's head as devilish horns do on Mahathir's. But this does not explain how Anwar came to fall so quickly from heir apparent-a position he had formally held for five years, informally for ten. Anwar has been in the roughhouse of Malaysian politics for long enough to know how vicious it can be. And he has been close enough to Mahathir to know that this is a man who takes no prisoners, makes up the rules as he goes along, and plays for high stakes to ensure personal dominance over the state and, more importantly, UMNO. Anwar had been at Mahathir's side when he fought off the biggest challenge to his rule, in 1988, when former finance minister Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah almost ousted him from the leadership.
Razaleigh came within a few UMNO delegate votes of toppling Mahathir, despite his association with the biggest of the many banking scandals which have linked business and politics in Malaysia for the past two decades. Ironically, Mahathir is now using a rehabilitated Razaleigh against Anwar's supporters.
The answer to the puzzle of Anwar's fall may be that he came to believe his own propaganda-or at least that of his young associates eager for power. Mahathir, on the other hand-unusually for someone who has been in power for 18 years-appears to have had no illusions about himself. He has never courted popularity and thrives on being himself, an outsider willing to take on individuals and institutions. Scruples were not for a man whose mission was to stay in power and modernise Malaysia on his own terms.
Anwar's political roots
Anwar's ambition was to become prime minister at a time of the party's choosing, rather than allow Mahathir to hang on as long as it suited him-which, many believed, was until he died. But Anwar's ambition, unlike Mahathir's, was not matched by ruthlessness. Perhaps this derives from their respective backgrounds. Although not an aristocrat, Anwar, 52, came up through the usual Malay elite route-the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar and then on to the University of Malaya. The elegant, eloquent youth then founded an idealistic Muslim youth movement, Abim (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia, or Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia). Anwar was jailed briefly in 1974 for leading a demonstration of disgruntled rice farmers, an episode which suggested a youthful commitment to social justice rather than to religious extremism. This was the era of the Vietnam war and communist insurgency was still a threat in Malaysia. The government was more worried about social activism than religious activism, which, in those pre-Iranian revolution days in Malaysia, was conservative rather than fundamentalist.
Anwar was closer to young social reformers than to the more conservative Malay Islamists represented at the political level by the Parti Islam. So, in 1982, when he decided to join the political mainstream, he opted for the one party which both occupied the central ground of Malay politics and offered the only realistic avenue for a Malay with national political ambitions-UMNO.
He easily made the transition from Abim to UMNO, then to parliament and a ministerial job. He was close to the pragmatic Mahathir, while his Abim past gave him credentials which helped to ward off challenges from Parti Islam. As a minister he may not have been especially effective; critics said he preferred to read and talk rather than to act. But his grassroots support was strengthened by stints at the agriculture and education ministries, and his appointment as finance minister in 1991 gave him access to the most effective lever of power in Malaysian politics-money. Charm and erudition, added to his Muslim and Malay credentials, made him a formidable politician, a seemingly natural leader.
Mahathir's little secret
Mahathir, on the other hand, started life not as a Malay but a Malayali-the people of Kerala in south India, where his father came from. At university in Singapore, he was listed as an Indian. Perhaps this explains why he became more Malay than many Malays, all the while pursuing a politics which had scant time for Malay instincts for consensus and compromise. The extreme pro-Malay policies with which he was associated in the late 1960s, and which he expressed in his long-banned book, The Malay Dilemma, revealed a deep frustration with traditional Malay ways. His life has been a series of battles to impose his modernising agenda on the nation. At the same time, he has maintained some visceral anti-western feelings, more familiar in the subcontinent than in Malaysia.
Mahathir is full of paradoxes on racial issues. Many of his policies have had the effect of reducing the racial element in government decisions, watering down the agenda to advance Malay interests. As a result he is well regarded by many in the Chinese business community. Yet, despite his trumpeting of Asian identity, he appears ashamed to admit his Indian heritage. In his new book, A New Deal for Asia, he writes about his father in such a way as to imply that he was a Malay dedicated to the improvement of his fellow Malays rather than the hard-working Indian immigrant and government servant that he was. No mention of Mahathir's Indian Muslim background ever appears in the media. The subject is taboo.
Nevertheless, Mahathir has been quick to promote himself as the embodiment of "Asian" identity and values, with diatribes against the west, usually couched in racial terms. Recently, he has taken to describing Anwar as a western stooge; as for the Asian crisis, it was the product of a western conspiracy which has set Asia back a generation. Mahathir, who had courted the foreign investment in export manufacturing which has created so much of Malaysia's wealth, is now the third world's scourge of foreign capital. Anwar, the Islamic teacher, is really a western liberal Trojan horse.
There has often been a big gap between Mahathir's rhetoric and his mostly pragmatic policies, but there has never been any doubt about his will to win. Anwar, by contrast, is more reasoned and sympathetic, but he lacks the killer instinct. From early 1998, Anwar had sought to use the regional crisis to speed the succession by identifying himself with reformasi (reform). But by gradually building a momentum for change, he reckoned without Mahathir's capacity-despite age and heart problems-for counter-attack. The prime minister was egged on by those around him, notably Daim Zainuddin, who had been finance minister before Anwar (and is now back in the job). Daim associates had most to lose from Anwar's new-found commitment to fighting cronyism. Anwar had created some of his own crony capitalists through government contracts and bank credit, but Daim's boys-plus at least one Mahathir relative-were bigger.
Ironically, the Asian crisis was indirectly the cause of Anwar's downfall, not Mahathir's (so far). Back in May 1997, Mahathir indicated that he might leave Anwar in charge while he took a three-month break. He did not seem uncomfortable that Anwar was espousing more liberal principles and "new generation" ideas. But the Asian crisis broke in the middle of it. Mahathir seems to have set his heart on seeing the crisis through, while Anwar, as finance minister, had the uncomfortable task of pursuing financial orthodoxies-raising interest rates and cutting back on the grand projects (Petronas Twin Towers, the world's tallest building, Putra Jaya, a new capital, and so on) which had become a hallmark of the latter Mahathir years.
Power struggles and policy disagreements might have been contained but for the fall of Suharto in Indonesia in May 1998. Reformasi was on everyone's lips, and so, too, was KKN (the Malay initials for corruption, collusion and nepotism). With his liberal credentials and devout Muslim background, Anwar was well-positioned to hitch himself to the reform bandwagon. His book, Asian Renaissance, set out his ideas. His speeches increasingly reflected not only the need for change, but for democracy and accountability. If weaknesses were not recognised, "we may face the Indonesian situation where people demanded changes." Anwar's ally, UMNO youth leader Ahmad Zaid Hamidi, made speeches about KKN.
As recently as last June, magazines such as Time and the Far Eastern Economic Review were predicting that Anwar's challenge was gaining momentum and the succession coming closer. But Anwar could not have launched a direct challenge to Mahathir until the 1999 UMNO assembly-and Mahathir was not going to wait until then. He still controlled the party and government machinery and decided to move against Anwar. Mahathir supporters began to reveal how much Anwar's backers, too, had profited from government decisions, especially those of the finance minister. A salacious book, Fifty Reasons Why Anwar Can't Become Prime Minister, began to circulate. Pro-Anwar editors were purged. It was only a matter of time before Anwar lost his job.
But was it necessary for Mahathir to go to such lengths to discredit Anwar with allegations of sodomy and other sexual misconduct? Was it necessary to destroy his character as well as his political career? Foreigners might think not. But Malay politics is full of examples of using the Internal Security Act to imprison mainstream politicians as well as real radicals. Several senior politicians have faced corruption charges for reasons which seem more the result of political power plays than anti-corruption zeal. And there are plenty of examples of using a compliant judicial system to harass opponents-for example, deputy opposition leader Lim Guan Seng is now in jail for printing "false news."
Nor can Anwar claim any credit for trying to keep the judiciary independent of the politicians. Mahathir's single most important extension of arbitrary executive power was his sacking, in 1988, of the Chief Justice (then called Lord President) and four other judges, following decisions which were politically inconvenient. Malaysia has not been the same since. Anwar was also party to the erosion of states' rights, press freedom and the powers of the Malay sultans. Whatever his personal inclinations, for years he has been too close to the development of Malaysia's brand of democratic authoritarianism (there are free if not entirely fair elections) to lead a reform movement.
So a dismissed and humiliated Anwar would probably have had difficulty rallying widespread support other than from his faction within UMNO; the sodomy charges seem to be superfluous. Indeed, Mahathir himself may not have felt a need to destroy Anwar, but those who wanted to block a comeback in the post-Mahathir era certainly did. And they knew that corruption allegations alone would have been shrugged off by an electorate which knows that money politics is the norm.
However, Anwar's trial became a bedroom farce replete with semen-stained mattresses, family feuds and flamboyant witnesses. The prosecution case was so riddled with holes that it had to be amended-no longer to prove sexual misconduct, but merely abuse of power in responding to the sex allegations. The sodomy charges have now been brought separately. In most jurisdictions they would have been thrown out. The prosecution has amended the dates of the alleged offences three times-by a matter of years, not days. But few expect Malaysian judges to challenge the state when high politics is involved.
After mahathir
Anwar's treatment has brought into focus two things about Malaysia. First, the widespread sense that reform is needed to restore the independence of the judiciary and reduce the links between business and government. Cronyism now remains more conspicuous in Malaysia than anywhere else in the region. Many people never much liked Anwar, particularly those who feared that he might use his Muslim credentials for disruptive communalist purposes. Many Chinese simply view his treatment as the outcome of a power struggle between Malays which does not concern them. But they do worry at the erosion of national institutions and the concentration of power in what was once a federal system with many checks and balances. Second, Anwar's treatment has demonstrated what an open society Malaysia is. News, views, scandals have a way of making their way into print regardless of the grip that the government tries to keep on the media, lawyers, and so on.
Where all this leads remains to be seen. The UMNO and government machinery, a booming stock market, real economic recovery and Mahathir's exploitation of economic nationalism-imposing exchange controls against "speculators"-will keep many UMNO voters loyal. This will offset some of the losses UMNO will suffer from the Anwar episode, and the emergence of a new opposition party, Keadilan, led by Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah. But the opposition is divided three ways: the Chinese Democratic Action Party at one end; Parti Islam at the other; and Keadilan trying to make space for itself in a multiracial middle. Even if opposition parties can agree on pacts to deliver maximum damage to UMNO-which is doubtful-many will vote for stability regardless of Mahathir's excesses.
But whatever the result of the election, the treatment of Anwar has changed how Malaysians think. Whoever succeeds Mahathir will lack his personal power; they will have to bend-like President Habibie in Indonesia-to demands to rebuild institutions, share power and separate their family business interests from the business of government.
Anwar will play an important role in the post-Mahathir world. Forgiveness is as much a part of Malay politics as ruthlessness. UMNO delegates will go with a winner because that is where jobs and patronage lie. But the martyr may yet trump the other candidates who emerge in the post-Mahathir world to heal UMNO's wounds. That is for the future. In this drama, Mahathir is still the chief character. He is Iago to Anwar's Othello.
